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Beyond grades: Ungraded portfolios transform teacher education
When student teachers explored social justice topics without the constraint of grades, the results were transformative: authentic risk-taking, deep self-reflection, and genuine commitment to equitable education practices.
The Project
Pooja Dharamshi's project team eliminated grades entirely from EDUC 400, replacing traditional assessment with multimodal portfolios where student teachers demonstrated learning through creative expressions from artistic self-portraits to reflective writings examining personal privilege and teaching commitments.
The ungraded approach aimed to create space for honest exploration of challenging social justice concepts without the performance anxiety that typically accompanies traditional assessment. Students engaged with topics like colonialism's impact on schooling and systemic educational inequities through iterative, process-oriented portfolio development.
Project Highlights
Authentic engagement replaced performance-oriented learning. Students described feeling liberated to "dig for the truth" without fear of saying the wrong thing for a grade. This psychological safety enabled honest self-examination and genuine exploration of complex social justice topics.
Creative expression facilitated deep knowledge integration. The multimodal portfolio format allowed students to bridge personal experiences with pedagogical knowledge in powerful ways, developing awareness of their positionality, informed stances on social issues, and connections to future teaching practice.
Risk-taking fostered transformative learning experiences. Students shifted from initial uncertainty to what they described as "liberation" and "freedom," engaging in sustained critical self-reflection and collaborative exploration of challenging concepts through activities like collective unpacking of colonialism's effects.
Looking Ahead
The project's success has led to a Small SSHRC Grant-funded Phase 2 research and multiple conference presentations at AERA, CSSE, and WestCAST.